


Revenant

by Providentia67



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Family Drama, Family History, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghosts, Force Visions, Gen, Possession, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Star-crossed, That's Not How The Force Works
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-07 23:31:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14681750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Providentia67/pseuds/Providentia67
Summary: When strange Force visions lead both Kylo Ren and Rey to the same Jedi Temple on Tython, they are forced to set their animosity aside to explore the ancient ruin and the tomb that lies beneath. There they find that theirs is not a unique story. Galactic war has a habit of driving people apart, and certain remnants of the past aren't willing to stay separated any longer.





	1. Prologue

Kylo woke in increments to the feeling of hair tickling the sensitive, cracked line of his scarred cheek.  His head jerked, a knot of pain throbbing at the back of his neck, evidence of sleeping at a bad angle, and the uncomfortable pull of his armored robes stiffened from disuse.  He groaned, deciding he must have fallen asleep watching the swirling blue vortex of hyperspace and shifted to a more comfortable sitting position.  Or at least, he tried.

The smooth movement of his repositioning stopped abruptly as Kylo’s wrists caught and his shoulders stretched.  He jerked mostly on instinct, mind blinking into focus in an instant and coiling the Force around him to take in what was happening.  First and foremost, Kylo was not in space, not in his shuttle, and his arms were locked in place, behind his back and around a pillar wide enough to support even his large frame.

Rage surged and Kylo willed whatever restraints were binding him to release.  He felt the hard metal quiver, but something pushed back hard and absolute against him and smothered his attempt.  Frustrated, he grunted and jerked again to no avail.

“Stop it, you’ll just hurt yourself.”

Kylo’s struggling ceased and his head shot up at the familiar voice.  “Rey?”  And it was her, the scavenger from Jakku, crouched several meters away from him with a sharpened piece of rock in one hand and carving what looked like a set of complicated symbols on the ground.  All at once, he remembered. 

“Rey, what happened?”  She ignored him, and continued working on her strange art project.  Behind her, the hidden tomb of the ancient Jedi lay open and ignored while she worked.  “Rey!”

This time she did pause, but her face when she looked across the room to him, was blank.  She said, “Don’t waste your energy.  Rey is not here right now,” and went back to her work.

“What?”  Kylo shook his head, and tried again to manipulate his bindings to release, but felt what he now recognized as Rey’s Force presence shove them back.  He growled in frustration and glared back at her.  So much for a truce.  Rey finished completing one of many circles on the ground then stood to her feet to scrutinize the whole of her work.  Dangling at her hip, instead of her makeshift staff which Kylo spotted laying discarded in the corner of the sealed room, was the long hilt of what he recognized as a double-bladed lightsaber.    Pieces started falling into place in his mind.

“Rey, talk to me.  What happened after we released the spirit?”

She turned her blank eyes on him.  “You freed me.  And for that, I thank you.”  Rey inclined her head in a polite bow.

“Freed you,” said Kylo.  “So, you’re the Jedi?”

Rey gathered her hands in front of her in a picture of serene composure that didn’t look right on her gangly frame.  The scavenger was a creature of motion and life, she didn’t look right standing so still.  “Indeed I am.  And I must say, it is most fortuitous that the two of you came here together.”  She stepped forward, past the carved circle to stand before Kylo and stare him down.

“Surely,” she said.  “It is proof that the Force wills my quest to succeed.”

Kylo huffed.  “Right.  And that would be?”

Rey crouched so that she was eye-level with him and stared right into Kylo’s eyes.  “To restore something that was stolen from me.”  She lifted a hand to his cheek and Kylo twitched as her thumb brushed the line of his scar.  Rey’s scar.  “And you, you will be the vessel of his return.”

Kylo grit his teeth.  That didn’t sound good.  He entertained the idea of breaking his restraints again but cast the idea aside as fruitless, instead he began seeding his will into the broken pieces of stone that had made up the tomb’s covering and masked the action by broadcasting his anger.  It wasn’t hard to produce the emotion. 

“Release the girl.”  Not-Rey blinked and then stood to her feet, for the moment ignoring his demand.  She returned to her place at the front of the circle and folded her hands in a meditative pose. 

“I must not.  The Force sent her to me so that I might complete this ritual.”

Kylo’s lips twisted in a crooked grin.  “Yeah, that’s not happening.”  He flung the broken pieces of stone at Not-Rey’s back.  As expected, the Jedi spirit sensed the danger the instant Kylo began the attack and turned her back to him before lifting her hand to stop the rocks.  Kylo seized the opportunity and plunged his mental presence into Rey’s mind.  Seizing at the bond his late master had formed.

His mind screamed.  _REY!  WAKE UP!_

He felt something stir in response, but before it grew strong enough to recognize Kylo was thrust from the mind.  His head cracked against the stone pillar as Not-Rey froze him where he sat.

The first stirrings of emotion, irritation, flickered on Not-Rey’s face.  She kept her hand lifted, and Kylo was held utterly still.  “An admirable attempt.  You are strong despite your lack of training.”

Kylo’s eye twitched but he couldn’t work his jaw enough to respond.

“I can sense your turmoil; torn between light and dark just as he was.”  Not-Rey tilted her head in a scrutinizing manner.  “And thankfully, not unattractive either.”

Kylo’s mind stuttered at the unexpected evaluation.

“Like I said, the perfect vessel for his essence.”

Gathering forth all his effort, Kylo managed to get out a single word.  “Who?”

Not-Rey’s face softened in a tender expression and suddenly, Kylo was sure she wasn’t looking at him or anything else around them anymore.  She was looking back at the past.  “The man I love.”  She turned and walked back towards the open tomb.  She reached inside and rifled through the collection of bones within until her hand retracted with something held tight in its grasp.  It was thin and oblong, painted red and black.

Kylo knew it for what it was immediately.  A mask.

Not-Rey placed the slightly concave object at the center of the collection of symbols and circles she had drawn and stepped back.  From the mask, Kylo sensed a torrent of dark and light-side energy fighting each other in a sublime display of dynamic equilibrium.  Not-Rey folded her hands a third time, bowed her head, and began to chant.

The words were dark, Kylo could feel the dark power of the Sith magics the instant she began and the etched symbols began to glow the eerie purple of Force lightning.  Kylo struggled against his bonds again, but somehow the Jedi spirit maintained enough focus to keep him pinned in place.

A presence began to form in the space about and above the mask and the Force around Kylo screamed danger.  As Not-Rey’s chanting reached its crescendo she opened her eyes and Kylo was shocked to see the wet tracks of tears down both her cheeks.  But her expression was not one of sadness, it was joy.  Not-Rey met his eyes and finished with a single word.

“Revan.”

* * *

_“Wake up!  You must wake up!”_

Finn shot up to a sitting position arms pinwheeling and Rey’s name on his lips.  It was becoming somewhat of a habit for him.  Thankfully this time he was not in a medical pod and didn’t hit his head.  On the downside however, he was still in the creepy basement of a Jedi Temple and both Kylo Ren and Rey were nowhere in sight.

“Chewie, you there?”  A weak bark from off to the right answered that question and the ex-stormtrooper got to his feet.  He groaned as new aches and pains made themselves known.  Whatever weird shockwave from inside the hidden room that had hit him must have been stronger than he thought.  Hidden room… right.

Finn rushed the trap door that separated him and Chewie from the secret Jedi tomb containing his best friend and worst enemy and pounded on the stone slab.  “Rey!  Rey, can you hear me!?”  He pressed his ear to the stone and listened.  There was a beat or two of silence and then Chewie moaned something he interpreted as disappointment before stepping back.  He paced the small hallway back and forth.

“We need to get in there.”

A groan from Chewie.

“How do we get in there?”

Another series of barks and moans.

“Dude, you know I can’t understand you right?”

_“He is trying to help you.  Seeing as I am attempting the same, I understand your friend’s frustration.”_

Finn most certainly did not scream.  He wheeled on the disembodied voice, blaster in the air, and found himself staring at what looked like a glowing blue ghost.  It looked a lot like a woman.  A bit taller than him dressed in some cross between Jedi robes and decorative armor and dark hair pulled back in a series of four braids and partitions.  She held herself tall and proud.

Finn tried to keep the hands on his blaster from shaking.  “Who are you?”

The ghost lifted her chin.  _“I am Jedi Grand Master, Satele Shan.”_

“And what do you want?”  Finn recognized it was probably stupid talking to a ghost, but right now, he was kind of out of options.

The Jedi Master’s expression turned grave as her eyes shifted from Finn to Chewie and back again.  _“Right now, I’d like to stop my ancestor from making the greatest mistake of her existence.”_

Finn frowned.  “Your ancestor?”

The ghost nodded.  _“She intends to raise her lover’s spirit and place it in the body of the man you call Kylo Ren.  This cannot be allowed to happen.”_

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”  The ghost frowned as Finn lowered his blaster and sighed.  “What’s with all you Force-users and family issues?”

The Jedi Master just looked even more confused than before.


	2. Echo

The amber and saffron glow of the Coruscanti sunrise glittered across the durasteel skyline, suffused by an indigo tint that slowly faded as the moments slid by.  Darting pinpricks of color cut the horizon as more and more speeders took to the sky, traversing the never-ending city.  A breeze blew in from the open balcony, and Rey breathed in deep the cool air of morning.  Coruscant was beautiful, and so were the rich apartments she found herself in.

Her apartments.

A thin but easy smile crept onto her tired lips, Rey nuzzled her face into the dark blue sheets of their bed before sighing and propping herself up with one hand while the other kept the bedsheet against her bare chest.  She took in the half of the large bed opposite her, rumpled and thrown aside, and then turned back to the balcony.  A dark figure was standing against the railing, one hand on the horizontal rail and the other pushing back a mop of chin-length black curls.  The sight made her smile broaden.

With Force-lightened steps, Rey slid from the bed and made for the balcony.  Instead of her three signature buns, she had let down the bottom two, leaving most of her mousy brown hair to hang free against her bare back.  She slid beside the man who shared her home, noting his obvious distraction as her sneaking went unabated.  He seemed pensive and troubled, his countenance paler than normal, and his dark eyes more vacant than she could recall seeing them for some time.  His scar too, _her_ scar, looked raw against his face, like it could start to bleed at any time.

Smile sinking, Rey reached up and settled a hand against the back of his broad shoulders.  “Everything okay, Ben?”

He jumped at her touch, but as soon as he turned to meet her eyes his drawn features settled into a more contented smile.  He shuffled to the side and settled an arm around her waist before turning back to continue watching the sunrise.  She might have been fooled into thinking whatever was haunting his mind was gone if not for how closely he held his thoughts and the unusually tight grip he kept on her hip.  Like he was afraid she’d slip away.  She rested her head against his bicep, he was too tall for her to reach his shoulder.

He pressed his lips against her hair.  “Fine,” he said.  “Just a bad dream.” 

She reached out to grip his free hand in her much smaller one.  “Want to talk about it?”  Rey could feel him shake his head and she sighed.  “This is the fourth time in a week, if something’s wrong we need to tell someone.  Get help.”

He made a low sound that might have been a laugh.  “From who?” he asked, sounding pained as well as frustrated.  “The Council?”

Rey frowned.  “What?”

“After everything, I don’t have the right to ask the Jedi Council for any kind of help.”

Rey shook her head and pulled herself away from Ben’s arms.  The Jedi Council hadn’t existed for over fifty years.  “Ben, what are you talking about?”

“Those things I did,” he said.  “Any good I do, it will never be enough to atone for the bad.”

Ben turned fully to face her and Rey flinched as he placed his palms on either of her shoulders.  All at once she seemed to remember.  Ben- Kylo Ren was Supreme Leader of the First Order.  He was on some Star Destroyer halfway across the galaxy.  And she, she had never been to Coruscant, let alone in an apartment she shared with a dark force-user.

“Ben, what’s going on?  Is this another vision?”

He didn’t respond, as though her question hadn’t even registered in his ears.  “Bastila,” he said.  “Taking down Malak and the Star Forge was just the beginning.  I can sense it. Our mission is not over yet.”

Rey wanted to sink into the floor.  The hairs at the back of her neck were standing on end and suddenly, she felt trapped in her own body.  Ben - was this Ben? - reached up and took her chin in one hand.  She wanted to tell him to stop.  But instead, to her horror, Rey found herself leaning into his touch and tilting her head up to meet his lips as he kissed her. 

His hair fell across her cheeks and Rey found body giggling at the way they tickled her skin.  The arm that was not holding the bedsheet around herself reached around to clutch his shoulder.  “Okay,” she whispered against his mouth.  “Whatever it is, we can do it.  Together.”

Ben nodded, keeping their foreheads pressed together.  “Together.”

* * *

Rey bolted upright in the co-pilot’s seat of the Falcon, her chest heaving as she fought to take in air and thoroughly scrub her brain of the bantha fodder her subconscious had somehow managed to whip up.  Ben - Kylo! – in an apartment on Coruscant?  And why hadn’t she been wearing clothes?  He kissed her!  And he hadn’t even called her by her name. 

Bastila.

If the dream had been another Force vision, maybe she had inadvertently placed herself in the position of whatever woman he was sleeping with.  The thought was not comforting.

Rey scrubbed her face with both hands and tried again to push the memories of the odd dream from her mind.  But when the image of the Coruscanti apartments remained etched into the backs of her eyelids, Rey instead focused on the cobalt blur of stars spiraling before her through the freighter’s cockpit.  Too long in hyperspace, she decided.  That’s what it was.

As if to reassure her of the status quo in the universe, a familiar grumbling alerted her to Chewbacca’s presence.  The lumbering Wookie ducked into the pilot’s seat beside her.  Rey tried to conceal her preoccupied expression, but failed miserably as Chewie barked out a question of concern.

She shook her head and waved him off.  “It’s fine.  Bad dream, is all.”  Rey couldn’t help but shiver at the eerie familiarity between her reply and Kylo’s in her dream.  Again, she shook her head and clapped her hands on her thighs before sitting up straight.  “Anyway.  How much longer until we reach Tython?”

Chewie tossed his head to one side and then the other in consideration.  Forty minutes.  Not a lot of time.  It seemed Rey had dozed off a bit longer than she had intended.  Getting to her feet, she reached her arms up into a stretch and made a pleased sound as she felt the kinks in her neck and shoulders pop. 

“Let me know when we we’re five minutes out.” 

With an acknowledgement called to her as she made her way out of the cockpit, Rey pushed all lingering thoughts of dreams and Force visions aside and instead started packing up the things she would need once they reached the planet. 

Tython, she had discovered, was home to a Jedi temple.  One that sat at the very core of the Jedi Order’s foundation.  Rey lifted one half of the severed lightsaber she kept in a pack beside her other belongings and considered its broken hilt.  She was going to need a new weapon.  But without any knowledge of how to construct her own lightsaber or where to find a kyber crystal to power it, she would have to resort to what she did know.  Scavenging.

If there was anywhere in the galaxy to find a preconstructed lightsaber, an abandoned Jedi temple had to be her best bet.  _Or,_ whispered a traitorous part of her brain she refused to acknowledge.  _She could ask Kylo._  

Rey stuffed the broken saber part back into her pack and instead took up her quarterstaff.  She tested the familiar weight in her hands and gave a few practice swings.  As effective as the classic Jedi saber was, saber fighting had never been Rey’s specialty.  She’d spent her life wielding this very staff.  She’d learned the hard way the best offensive and defensive tactics she could pull off, and tested them against a whole array of opponents who had wanted to either kill her or worse. 

Unfortunately, a heavy, metal stick wasn’t going to be enough to stop Kylo Ren’s crossguard saber.  So, to Tython it was.

Feeling a bit disgruntled, Rey tossed her staff toward the pile of bags and blankets hoarded around the abandoned dejarik table. 

“Ow!”

Rey froze and wheeled back around.  She knew that voice.  “Finn?”  The ex-stormtrooper sat upright, rubbing at his head and sending the bags he’d been hiding under scattering on the ground.  “Did you stowaway on my ship?”

Finn gasped, affronted, and opened his mouth as if to disagree before pausing.  Rey crossed her arms and lifted her an eyebrow.  “It’s not what it looks like.”  His face was flat and serious, but Rey could easily sense the nerves fluttering inside him.

“Has that line ever worked?”

The stormtrooper stoicism faded in an instant and Finn shifted to a more comfortable position before sighing.  “Yeah, no.”

“Then why are you here?  I told you I needed to do this alone.”

“You brought Chewie!”

“It’s his ship!”

“You said it was your ship!”

“Semantics!”  Will to argue draining, Rey sighed and pushed Finn’s shoulder until he made room for her to slide in beside him.  “Look, I just didn’t want you to come, alright?”  She didn’t look at him, even when she felt something dark and sour in him spike.

“Oh.”

Rey lifted her hand and put it on Finn’s back.  “I didn’t mean it like that.  You’re my best friend, Finn.”

“Then why?”  His voice was hard now, defensive.

Rey’s fingers tightened around the fabric of Finn’s jacket, and beneath she could just feel the raised edges of the scar that bisected his back from shoulder to hip.  The scar _he_ left.

“Because, I’m scared.”

Thank the Force for Finn, he understood.  “Of him?”  Rey nodded.  She retracted her hand from his back and then looked down at her open palms in her lap.  “Rey,” he said, shifting so that he was facing her as much as he could in the cramped booth.  “You know I’d never let him hurt you.”

Or maybe he didn’t.  Rey offered Finn a small smile and then slid away.  She got to her feet and made for the section of the ship that held its cramped sleeping quarters.  “It’s not that I’m worried about,” she said.  Ben, she knew, would never hurt her.  “It’s what he’d do to you and everyone else I care about.” 

Rey spent the remainder of her time in hyper space in a light meditative state in her room.  It helped pass the time, but anything close to a full meditation was just too much sitting still for her.  Still, she took the time to focus herself and carefully test the walls she had constructed around her mind.  The Bond, as she had decided to call it, was sitting there idle and frayed, but stubbornly attached in a way that defied all her attempts of tearing it out.  In the weeks following their confrontation on the _Supremacy,_ Rey had eventually accepted the fact that The Bond was there to stay.  Still, she’d been careful to fortify herself before even considering this mission. With any luck, she could land on Tython, find a replacement lightsaber, and get out before the Supreme Leader of the First Order decided to take time out of his busy schedule to spy on her.

A call from Finn and Chewie snapped Rey out of her musing and to attention.  She slung her pack and staff over her shoulder and jogged back to the _Millennium Falcon_ ’s cockpit just in time to spot the blue and green sphere blink into view. A quick view of their sensors revealed no other ships in orbit.  Rey grinned, it seemed they’d made it to Tython unnoticed. 

* * *

The spirit was back again.

Kylo didn’t react, didn’t even move from the pilot seat of his shuttle.  But he did take the time to discretely fortify the walls around his mind and especially around the dormant bond.  His left eye twitched. 

The spirit moved, the robed and hooded figure moving to stand just off to the right of where Kylo was sitting.  It turned its head towards him, paused for a moment, and then looked back into the hyperspace vortex before dispelling itself.

Kylo sighed and let his mental barriers relax.  He checked on his shuttle’s progress.  Still an hour until he reached his destination.  Too long, he thought as he settled in to continue building up the barriers in his mind.  As much as he wanted to let himself sink against the bond that connected him to the brightest point of light in the galaxy, he couldn’t take the risk.  He could inadvertently lead whatever spirit was haunting him right to Rey.

The tempered leather of his gloves creaked as he clenched his fists.  Snoke should have been the end of it.  The end of the whispers in his mind.  But it seemed as if no sooner had he freed himself from one monster that another had taken its place.  Eyelids heavy, Kylo let them slide shut.

_Darkness.  Solitude.  An aching emptiness where the embrace of the Force should have been.  He was paralyzed.  Trapped.  Unable to get up, to fight, to MOVE.  She was waiting for him.  Still waiting for him.  But there was only the entity in his mind.  Trying to pry secrets from him that must not be revealed.  It was keeping him away from her.  Keeping him away from his bright star—his love—he needed to get out, get home, GET FREE!_

Kylo’s eyes snapped open and he was on his feet sending every chair in the cockpit flying in an instant.  He tugged at the Force.  Gathered it jealously against himself and tried to focus on breathing as he scanned the room for the spirit.  It was still gone.  Frustration boiled inside of him and with a roar of anger he crushed one of the uncomfortable durasteel seats in the cockpit into a ball of scrap with a flick of the wrist.

The Force felt raw in his grip but he clung to it anyway as he looked again at the shuttle’s estimated arrival time.  He needed to get to Tython.  The sensations and visions of darkness and emptiness plaguing him needed to stop.

He’d probed the spirit for information, but the only thing he’d ever gotten in return was a knowledge that the answers lay in the planet’s Jedi temple.  And so, left with few other options, he’d given the reins of the First Order to Hux, ordered three of his more loyal knights to discretely keep watch over the conniving little worm, and left.  Perhaps when he arrived, the spirit would stop haunting him with whatever the visions were.

The control panel made a small noise and the shuttle dropped from hyperspace above a blue-and-green orb.  Kylo narrowed his eyes.  His scanners were picking up ion trails consistent with a Corellian YT light freighter. 

He felt an urge to tug at the bond in his mind but resisted.  Force help him, he hoped she was there for some other purpose.  Kylo didn’t think he was ready for another confrontation with her just yet.

 


End file.
